As this point I think I hear some of my better educated readers exclaim,
"How could you in Flatland know anything about angles and degrees,
or minutes? We SEE an angle, because we, in the region of Space,
can see two straight lines inclined to one another; but you,
who can see nothing but on straight line at a time, or at all events
only a number of bits of straight lines all in one straight line,--
how can you ever discern an angle, and much less register angles
of different sizes?"

I answer that though we cannot SEE angles, we can INFER them, and this
with great precision. Our sense of touch, stimulated by necessity,
and developed by long training, enables us to distinguish angles
far more accurately than your sense of sight, when unaided by a rule
or measure of angles. Nor must I omit to explain that we have great
natural helps. It is with us a Law of Nature that the brain
of the Isosceles class shall begin at half a degree,
or thirty minutes, and shall increase (if it increases at all)
by half a degree in every generation until the goal of 60 degrees
is reached, when the condition of serfdom is quitted, and the freeman
enters the class of Regulars.

Consequently, Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale
or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimen
of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land.
Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral
and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity
of the Criminal and Vagabond classes, there is always a vast superfluity
of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair
abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely
destitute of civil rights; and a great number of them, not having